"
"Are you perhaps speaking of me?"
"Yes, I am speaking of you, poor Pinocchio--of you who are simple
enough to believe that money can be sown and gathered in fields in the
same way as beans and gourds. I also believed it once, and to-day I
am suffering for it. To-day--but it is too late--I have at last learnt
that to put a few pennies honestly together it is necessary to know
how to earn them, either by the work of our own hands or by the
cleverness of our own brains."
"I don't understand you," said the puppet who was already trembling
with fear.
"Have patience! I will explain myself better," rejoined the Parrot.
"You must know, then, that whilst you were in the town the Fox and the
Cat returned to the field; they took the buried money and then fled
like the wind. And now he that catches them will be clever."
Pinocchio remained with his mouth open, and not choosing to believe
the Parrot's words he began with his hands and nails to dig up the
earth that he had watered. And he dug, and dug, and dug, and made such
a deep hole that a rick of straw might have stood up in it; but the
money was no longer there.
He rushed back to the town in a state of desperation, and went at once
to the Courts of Justice to denounce the two knaves who had robbed him
to the judge.
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